Showing posts with label Trump. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trump. Show all posts

Saturday, October 31, 2020

For Trump, Conservative Catholics Are The New Evangelicals

    NPR   October 26, 2020

Four years ago, white evangelicals rallied behind Donald Trump's presidential candidacy, and he reveled in their adulation.

"The evangelicals love me, and I love them," Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, evangelicals were the only faith group he singled out for thanks, saying their support was "a big reason for me being here tonight."

In the general election, however, it was not the evangelicals who carried Trump to victory but Catholics, a group he had rarely mentioned in his speeches.

People were quite amazed at the overall impact that the white evangelicals had in the election, but I think what was missed was the critical role of the Catholic voters," says Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

Despite losing the popular vote, Trump reached the presidency in large part because he won traditionally Democratic Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all states in which Catholics outnumber evangelicals by significant margins.

"It was the Catholic vote that won those states for Donald Trump," says Tim Huelskamp, a former Republican congressman from Kansas now serving as an adviser to the Catholics for Trump movement, a coalition that did not formally exist in 2016.

Trump Becomes the First President Since Eisenhower to Change Faiths in Office

CT  OCTOBER 27, 2020 

More than 180,000 people have stopped identifying with the Presbyterian Church (USA) in the past four years, according to official church numbers. Now there’s one more: President Donald Trump.

Trump told Religion News Service last week in a written interview mediated by spiritual advisor Paula White-Cain that he doesn’t consider himself to be Presbyterian. He was confirmed in the church and has called himself Presbyterian numerous times over the years. But no more.

“I now consider myself to be a non-denominational Christian,” Trump said in the statement. “Melania and I have gotten to visit some amazing churches and meet with great faith leaders from around the world. During the unprecedented COVID-19 outbreak, I tuned into several virtual church services and know that millions of Americans did the same.”

While the mainline denomination has previously challenged Trump’s affiliation, his recent departure seems to be the result of the president slowly moving away from his childhood church and toward a more evangelical faith.


Monday, August 31, 2020

‘Ave Maria’ caps Republican National Convention: ‘Most Catholic moment in American history’


Life News Aug 28, 2020

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 28, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – The Republican National Convention concluded with what one commentator has called “the most Catholic moment in American history”: the performance of “Ave Maria” – the “Hail Mary” prayer, put to music. 

Opera singer Christopher Macchio offered a beautiful rendition of the song, cherished by Catholics, from the Blue Room balcony of the White House after President Donald Trump’s speech officially accepting his party’s nomination to run for reelection. 

After the sung prayer to Our Lady, Macchio invited the Trump family and guests gathered on the south lawn of the White House to join in singing “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful.”

“God will honor those who honor Him (and those who honor the Mother of God the Son),” proclaimed Dr. Taylor Marshall, Catholic author and a member of Catholics for Trump advisory board.  “Ave Maria!!!!”

“This is the most Catholic moment in American history,” declared conservative Catholic commentator John Zmirak. “Thank New York City, a once great Catholic city, for making potus possible.”

“By all means let's invoke the help of Jesus' mother in protecting our nation & our descendants from those who consider abortion ‘sacred’ and our physical, sexual natures as the tools of fetishists, quack doctors, and pornographers,” continued Zmirak in a subsequent Tweet. 

“The stakes could not be clearer this election,” he added.

Friday, July 31, 2020

Archbishop letter to President Trump

June 7, 2020
Holy Trinity Sunday
Mr. President,

In recent months we have been witnessing the formation of two opposing sides that I would call Biblical: the children of light and the children of darkness. The children of light constitute the most conspicuous part of humanity, while the children of darkness represent an absolute minority. And yet the former are the object of a sort of discrimination which places them in a situation of moral inferiority with respect to their adversaries, who often hold strategic positions in government, in politics, in the economy and in the media. In an apparently inexplicable way, the good are held hostage by the wicked and by those who help them either out of self-interest or fearfulness.

These two sides, which have a Biblical nature, follow the clear separation between the offspring of the Woman and the offspring of the Serpent. On the one hand, there are those who, although they have a thousand defects and weaknesses, are motivated by the desire to do good, to be honest, to raise a family, to engage in work, to give prosperity to their homeland, to help the needy, and, in obedience to the Law of God, to merit the Kingdom of Heaven. On the other hand, there are those who serve themselves, who do not hold any moral principles, who want to demolish the family and the nation, exploit workers to make themselves unduly wealthy, foment internal divisions and wars, and accumulate power and money: for them the fallacious illusion of temporal well-being will one day – if they do not repent – yield to the terrible fate that awaits them, far from God, in eternal damnation.

...

Although it may seem disconcerting, the opposing alignments I have described are also found in religious circles. There are faithful Shepherds who care for the flock of Christ, but there are also mercenary infidels who seek to scatter the flock and hand the sheep over to be devoured by ravenous wolves. It is not surprising that these mercenaries are allies of the children of darkness and hate the children of light: just as there is a deep state, there is also a deep church that betrays its duties and forswears its proper commitments before God. Thus the Invisible Enemy, whom good rulers fight against in public affairs, is also fought against by good shepherds in the ecclesiastical sphere. It is a spiritual battle, which I spoke about in my recent Appeal which was published on May 8.

For the first time, the United States has in you a President who courageously defends the right to life, who is not ashamed to denounce the persecution of Christians throughout the world, who speaks of Jesus Christ and the right of citizens to freedom of worship. Your participation in the March for Life, and more recently your proclamation of the month of April as National Child Abuse Prevention Month, are actions that confirm which side you wish to fight on. And I dare to believe that both of us are on the same side in this battle, albeit with different weapons.

For this reason, I believe that the attack to which you were subjected after your visit to the National Shrine of Saint John Paul II is part of the orchestrated media narrative which seeks not to fight racism and bring social order, but to aggravate dispositions; not to bring justice, but to legitimize violence and crime; not to serve the truth, but to favor one political faction. And it is disconcerting that there are Bishops – such as those whom I recently denounced – who, by their words, prove that they are aligned on the opposing side. They are subservient to the deep state, to globalism, to aligned thought, to the New World Order which they invoke ever more frequently in the name of a universal brotherhood which has nothing Christian about it, but which evokes the Masonic ideals of those who want to dominate the world by driving God out of the courts, out of schools, out of families, and perhaps even out of churches.

The American people are mature and have now understood how much the mainstream media does not want to spread the truth but seeks to silence and distort it, spreading the lie that is useful for the purposes of their masters. However, it is important that the good – who are the majority – wake up from their sluggishness and do not accept being deceived by a minority of dishonest people with unavowable purposes. It is necessary that the good, the children of light, come together and make their voices heard. What more effective way is there to do this, Mr. President, than by prayer, asking the Lord to protect you, the United States, and all of humanity from this enormous attack of the Enemy? Before the power of prayer, the deceptions of the children of darkness will collapse, their plots will be revealed, their betrayal will be shown, their frightening power will end in nothing, brought to light and exposed for what it is: an infernal deception.

Mr. President, my prayer is constantly turned to the beloved American nation, where I had the privilege and honor of being sent by Pope Benedict XVI as Apostolic Nuncio. In this dramatic and decisive hour for all of humanity, I am praying for you and also for all those who are at your side in the government of the United States. I trust that the American people are united with me and you in prayer to Almighty God.

United against the Invisible Enemy of all humanity, I bless you and the First Lady, the beloved American nation, and all men and women of good will.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò
Titular Archbishop of Ulpiana
Former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America            Lifesite

Trump visits the shrine of John Paul II

NY Post  June 2020

President Trump and the first lady visited the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Northeast Washington, DC, Tuesday, a day after Trump appeared at looting-damaged St. John’s Episcopal Church.

The president and Melania Trump walked from the building about 11:45 a.m. onto a large outdoor patio, turned and faced the assembled media and posed for a photo.

They then turned around and stood for several minutes before the statue of the late pontiff, where a wreath had been laid earlier, before walking back inside the building without speaking or taking questions.

John Paul II served as pope from 1978 until his death in 2005, and was declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in April 2014. The effort to erect the shrine was spearheaded by the Knights of Columbus, a lay Roman Catholic organization.

Sunday, May 31, 2020

Is the Lockdown the Greatest Policy Disaster in U.S. History?


Donald Trump calls the media “the enemy of the people”, but it’s much worse than that. The media is a national security threat. Just look at the way they’ve handled the coronavirus. The hysterical 24-7 coverage has people so terrified they’ve locked themselves in their homes inflicting catastrophic damage on the economy. That disaster never would’ve taken place if the media hadn’t focused all their energy on scaring people to death. Now the damage is done, millions of people have lost their jobs, tens of thousands of small and mid-sized businesses are facing bankruptcy, and the world’s biggest economy has been reduced to a smoldering wastelands. And what was gained? Nothing.

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Trump On Coronavirus Outbreak: 'This Was Artificially Induced'


Kushner’s team seeks national coronavirus surveillance system


Jared Kushner
Politico 04/08/2020
White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s task force has reached out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system to give the government a near real-time view of where patients are seeking treatment and for what, and whether hospitals can accommodate them, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions.

The proposed national network could help determine which areas of the country can safely relax social-distancing rules and which should remain vigilant. But it would also represent a significant expansion of government use of individual patient data, forcing a new reckoning over privacy limits amid a national crisis.

Health privacy laws already grant broad exceptions for national security purposes. But the prospect of compiling a national database of potentially sensitive health information has prompted concerns about its impact on civil liberties well after the coronavirus threat recedes, with some critics comparing it to the Patriot Act enacted after the 9/11 attacks.


Already, the Trump administration has sought to ease data-sharing rules and assure health data companies they won’t be penalized for sharing information with state and federal officials — a move driven in part by Kushner’s push to assemble the national network, according to an individual with knowledge of the decision.

“This is a genuine crisis — we have to work through it and do our best to protect people’s health,” said Jessica Rich, a former director of the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer protection bureau. “But doing that doesn’t mean we have to destroy privacy.”

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Trump and Francis bulding the one world religion

NTEB  January 25, 2020
VP Mike Pence arrived at the Vatican for what was billed as a 'meet and greet', then stunned everyone by turning into a high-level, closed-door meeting on something so sensitive that neither party was willing to discuss it. And within mere hours of that bombshell, President Trump announced he was finally ready to reveal his 'Deal Of The Century' Middle East Peace Plan, and asked Benjamin Netanyahu to fly to Washington this coming Tuesday, for a meeting on that very subject. Do you see where all this is heading? Trump has the relationship with Israel, Pope Francis has the relationship with the Muslims, put the two together and....peace in the Middle East?

Suddenly, everything begins to makes sense. From one side, I have been watching Donald Trump over the past three and a half years, the man that God placed in power of the world’s strongest and most-prosperous nation, doing amazing things for the nation of Israel. The thing he wants most to do in Israel is his ‘Deal Of The Century‘ Middle East Peace Plan, headed up by his Jewish son in law, Jared Kushner.

“Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves: Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.” Isaiah 28:14-16 (KJB)

On the other side, I have been watching Pope Francis over the past 7 years, weaving and scheming to build the One World Religion of Chrislam. In 2019, things came to a head as Chrislam, otherwise known as the Abrahamic Faiths Initiative, was finally formalized. The peace covenant document known as ‘Human Fraternity For World Peace‘ was signed by Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, and sealed by kissing each other on the mouth. Chrislam.

For quite awhile, I viewed both these paradigms as something happening separately from each other, until today. The thing that always nagged at me in the back of my mind was how to combine the two and keep all parties happy at the same time. It was seemingly impossible. Then last week, U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Callista Gingrich, held a meeting at her office at the Vatican and declared to Pope Francis that the United States is “fully committed to working with you to advance our shared goals of mutual respect, religious freedom, and peaceful coexistence” in regards to the Abrahamic Faiths Initiative, otherwise known as Chrislam.

Do you see where all this is heading? Trump has the relationship with Israel, Pope Francis has the relationship with the Muslims, put the two together and….peace in the Middle East? Sure seems like it to me. The missing ingredient that no other political leader has had in the past 70 years is Chrislam. Rick Warren started it, handed the baton with full evangelical support to Pope Francis, the pope then signed a covenant with Islam, and the Trump administration has thrown in their full support in the same week as announcing they are finally ready with the Peace Plan. Across the board you have complete and total harmony, everyone gets something, everyone is happy.

Saturday, January 25, 2020

Trump uniting with evangelicals

NBC.  Jan. 3, 2020
President Donald Trump launched his campaign's new coalition to court evangelical voters at a Latino megachurch Friday, part of efforts to shore up support in the community for his re-election bid as well as broaden it in the wake of a prominent evangelical magazine coming out in support of his impeachment.

“Every Democratic candidate running for president is trying to punish religious believers and silence our churches,” Trump told a crowd of thousands at the Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesús. "This election is about the survival of our nation."

The rally-style event, which included everything from a prayer session and brief remarks by a young woman who chose not to get an abortion after becoming pregnant unexpectedly in college, saw Trump acknowledge the power of the evangelical voters who helped put him in office in 2016 and boast of conservative accomplishments both real and exaggerated while promising more to come.

A win in November, Trump said, would be “another monumental victory for faith and family, God and country."

Mike Pence meets Pope Francis in private audience


U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, second from left, and part of his delegation are given a private tour of the Vatican after his private audience with Pope Francis, at the Vatican, Friday, Jan. 24, 2020. (Associated Press)
Fox. January 25, 2020
VATICAN CITY — U.S. Vice President Mike Pence met with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Friday, discussing the anti-abortion march in Washington and telling the pontiff, "You made me a hero" back home by granting him a private audience.

The pope and the vice president had a private hour-long conversation. Pence was beaming after the meeting, which appeared to be particularly cordial.

The hero description apparently referred to Pence's Roman Catholic family upbringing. He later became an evangelical Christian.

Trump had a private audience with Francis at the Vatican in 2017, and on Friday in Washington, the U.S. president was attending an anti-abortion rally in Washington. Trump is the first sitting U.S. president to do so in the history of the annual March for Life’s history.

Pence's office said the march in the U.S. capital was among the topics discussed with the pontiff. Catholic church teaching forbids abortion, and Pence himself has been staunchly anti-abortion.
In Friday's interview, Pence also praised Francis for his “passion for the sanctity of life.”

Francis smiled warmly throughout the traditional exchange of gifts at the end of the audience. Pence presented the pope with a large, plain wooden cross made from a tree on the grounds of his official residence in Washington.

Francis gave Pence five bound books of his writings as pope. The pontiff then pointed to a large white envelope, explaining, “this is a message of peace.” Francis was referring to an annual message to promote peace issued by the Vatican.

A Trum calendar: replacing the seventh day Sabbath for the first day Sunday?

Perpetual Calendar Graphic by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times (V2)
Washington Times  December 31, 2019 
For more than 500 years, the most popular and influential book after the Bible was “The Golden Legend” by Jacobus de Varagine. At the end of the 13th century, Varagine was grappling with how medieval Christians perceived time: He mapped the liturgical calendar and the stories of feast-day saints associated with it. The book was a bestseller.
Flash forward to today. We now waste a great deal of time fumbling around with the flawed Gregorian calendar. For one thing, new calendars have to be printed ever year. What a waste of both time and money.
But this isn’t the only cost dished up by our Gregorian calendar. Indeed, there are a number of problems and inefficiencies associated with it. Under the Gregorian calendar, the scheduling of the days for holidays, sporting events and school schedules — to name but a few — must be redone each year. What a waste of time and money.
The Gregorian calendar also causes confusion when it comes to the age-old idea of “time is money.” For example, to determine how much interest accrues for a wide variety of instruments — bonds, mortgages, swaps, forward rate agreements, etc. — day counts are required. The current calendar contains complexities and anomalies that create day-count problems.
And there are other financial problems generated by the Gregorian calendar. For example, back in 2013, Apple was caught up in a quarterly reporting fiasco. Following its firt-quarter 2013 earnings announcement, Apple suffered its worst one-day loss in four years as a result of the company’s failure to meet Wall Street’s expectations. This was largely due to a simple calendar-generated error — most analysts failed to account for the fact that Apple’s Q1 2013 was one week shorter than the same quarter the year before.
The past 400 years have only seen a handful of cohesive efforts to standardize the modern calendar or iron out the kinks of the Gregorian calendar. The crusade for calendar modernization found one of its most prominent champions in 19th-century industrialist George Eastman, the founder of the Eastman Kodak Co. Driven by a desire to create a more business-friendly calendar, he developed the “Eastman plan.” It was one of the first cogent models of a fixed (or permanent) calendar and was designed to eliminate the practical and financial inefficiencies generated by the Gregorian calendar system.
However innovative, the Eastman plan was in many respects crude, failing most crucially to account for and preserve the Sabbath. Like many past attempts at calendar reform, the Eastman plan was doomed by its failure to address religious and cultural concerns. Indeed, one of the major criticisms of such calendar reforms is that they interfered with religious days of rest, which play an integral role in the organization of economic activity, i.e. “the work week.”

Friday, December 6, 2019

While Congress subjects the nation to its carefully orchestrated impeachment drama, our civil liberties continue to die a slow, painful death


Image result for liberties at stake"
Rutherford    December 02, 2019
“It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”—Thomas Paine
While Congress subjects the nation to its impeachment-flavored brand of bread-and-circus politics, our civil liberties continue to die a slow, painful death by a thousand cuts.

Case in point: while Americans have been fixated on the carefully orchestrated impeachment drama that continues to monopolize headlines, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law legislation extending three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which had been set to expire on December 15, 2019.

Once again, to no one’s surprise, the bureaucrats on both sides of the aisle—Democrats and Republicans alike—prioritized political grandstanding over principle and their oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution...

The legislation passed the Senate with a bipartisan 74-to-20 vote. It squeaked through the House of Representatives with a 231-192 margin. And it was signed by President Trump—who earlier this year floated the idea of making the government’s surveillance powers permanent—with nary a protest from anyone about its impact on the rights of the American people.

Spending bill or not, it didn’t have to shake down this way, even with the threat of yet another government shutdown looming.

Congress could have voted to separate the Patriot Act extension from the funding bill, as suggested by Rep. Justin Amash, but that didn’t fly. Instead as journalist Norman Solomon writes for Salon, “The cave-in was another bow to normalizing the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.”
That, right there, is the key to all of this: normalizing the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.

In the 18 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.

The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens—no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.

This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that “had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.” And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.

Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.

The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).

In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.

The federal government also made liberal use of its new powers, especially through the use (and abuse) of the nefarious national security letters, which allow the FBI to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies at the mere say-so of the government agent in charge of a local FBI office and without prior court approval.

In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.

We’re also being subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.
It’s only getting worse, folks.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Policymakers may not be able to reverse the next global recession

NBC  Oct/16/2019
There’s an “uncomfortably high” chance that a recession could hit the global economy in the next 12-18 months — and policymakers may not be able to reverse that course, an economist said on Wednesday.
“I think risks are awfully high that if something doesn’t stick to script then we do have a recession,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “I’ll say this also: Even if we don’t have a recession over the next 12-18 months, I think it’s pretty clear that we’re going to have a much weaker economy.”
Avoiding a slowdown in economic activity requires many factors to “stick to script” at the same time, he said. That includes U.S. President Donald Trump not escalating the tariff war with China, the U.K. finding a resolution to Brexit and central banks continuing their monetary stimulus, Zandi explained.

Saturday, August 31, 2019

Trump: ‘I could declare a national emergency’

August 25, 2019  NBC
SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ, France — President Donald Trump said Sunday he could declare the escalating U.S.-China trade war as a national emergency if he wanted to.
“In many ways this is an emergency,” Trump said at the G-7 leaders meeting of the ongoing trade battle between the world’s top two economies.
“I could declare a national emergency, I think when they steal and take out and intellectual property theft anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion a year and when we have a total lost of almost a trillion dollars a year for many years,” Trump said, adding that he had no plan right now to call for a national emergency.
“Actually we are getting along very well with China right now, we are talking. I think they want to make a deal much more than I do. I’m getting a lot of money in tariffs its coming in by the billions. We’ve never gotten 10 cents from China, so we will see what happens.”

Saturday, January 26, 2019

Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo may be trying to bring on the apocalypse

President Donald Trump’s vice president and secretary of state appear to have a conflict between their private religious beliefs and their public duties, according to a financial journalist.
Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo are each a “genuine, end-of-days, believer in the apocalypse,” and Financial Times journalist Edward Luce said their religious beliefs about the end times exerts a troubling influence on their duties.
“Generally I believe a public figure’s beliefs should be irrelevant to their job,” Luce wrote. “Whether they’re atheist, Opus Dei, Buddhist or Muslim, should have no bearing on our assessment of their fitness for office. Yet I can’t help but feel anxious that both of Donald Trump’s main global envoys, Pompeo and Pence, have a conflict between their private beliefs and what they publicly claim to be doing.”
Luce argued that both Trump administration officials were part of a “millenarian cult,” and he worried their “militant creed” would influence their public policies to spark a “final conflagration in which the righteous will vanquish the wicked.”
“Call me a serial fretter, but I don’t take comfort from the fact that Pence is a heartbeat away from being commander-in-chief,” Luce wrote. “Nor do I see Pompeo as one of the grown-ups restraining Trump. He’s an enabler, not a preventer. Where Trump goes, Pompeo will follow. Let’s hope Trump never gets religion.”

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Trump defends Pope Francis’s handling of the abuse crisis

Catholic Herald 
The President told the Daily Caller: 'The Pope is handling it, I guess, the best anyone can handle it'
Donald Trump has defended Pope Francis’s handling of the abuse crisis, saying that the Pontiff is handling the situation “the best anyone can handle it”.

Friday, August 17, 2018

America's biggest weapons-sale in all of history.

UNZ   August 10, 2018
Donald Trump’s biggest success, thus far into his Presidency, has been his sale of $400 billion (originally $350 billion) of U.S.-made weapons to the Saudi Arabian Government, which is owned by its royal family, after whom that nation is named. This sale alone is big enough to be called Trump’s “jobs plan” for Americans. It is also the biggest weapons-sale in all of history. It’s 400 billion dollars, not 400 million dollars; it is gigantic, and, by far, unprecedented in world-history.

Militarizing Space

Counter Punch 
This week Vice President Pence announced that the Department of Defense is beginning a planning process to establish a sixth military branch, known as the Space Force.  Pence’s statement was a public reassurance that Trump’s sudden announcement of the Space Force was not just another of the president’s frequent sudden announcements that have no connection to reality.  Pence claimed that this new Space Force military division will be in place by 2020, and while many in the media are reacting as if the militarization of space were a sudden departure from American policy, as with much of the Trump presidency, this policy shift is only a minor, more grotesque version of what our government has long routinely undertaken.

Sunday, April 29, 2018

Donald Trump signs a bill enabling state and federal authorities to pursue websites that host sex-trafficking ads

President Trump signed a bill Wednesday that gives federal and state prosecutors greater power to pursue websites that host sex-trafficking ads and enables victims and state attorneys general to file lawsuits against those sites.

Addressing the victims and family members in attendance, the president said, “I’m signing this bill in your honor. … You have endured what no person on Earth should ever have to endure.” Trump added, “This is a great piece of legislation, and it’s really going to make a difference.”

The bill, nicknamed “FOSTA” for its title, “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act,” goes into effect immediately, but its impact was already being seen around the Internet as sites shut down sex-related areas and stopped accepting sex-related advertising.

 “FOSTA gives prosecutors the tools they need,” said Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), chief sponsor of the bill, “to ensure that no online business can ever approach the size of Backpage again.”